krbusby

The files will be untouched, except for the name changes.

This is beginning to look like the most logical way of doing it. My biggest reason was how long it takes to mark the tracks and edit the info. I was using Songbird to play through my MacBook's digital out into my JE320. Guess I'll go back to doing that. Thanks for the feedback.

The reason I'm on these forums and the reason I've been playing with the Minidisc format again is due to hearing damage. I find I use music now to cope and need the best quality my damaged hearing can find. In a nutshell, I was operating a jackhammer one day. I had forgot my ear protection and was too lazy to go get some tissue or anything to put in my ear canals. I only ran the hammer for a couple of hours. Jackhammers are bad but not bad enough to have cause the damage I suffered. It was actually the sound of the breaking material that did the damage. That was several years ago and the ringing I thought would go away the next day, never has. It's called tinnitus and is actually damage to the brain's sound processor as opposed to the eardrums themselves. The brain simply cannot interpret what it's hearing resulting in a buzz or ringing sound instead. Mine is quite loud and degenerative. I find myself raising my voice to speak to people because I think I have to talk over the noise. Music helps because it takes my mind, or brain, off the noise. It's still there but it's less noticeable. It doesn't seem possible to drown it out with volume because the sound is in the brain and not coming from an outside source. So it's because of this that music has become all the more important to me, and mp3 players just don't cut it. I went out and bought myself a classic 80's Technics stereo system and a Sony MDS-JE320 (actually I was thrift-store shopping with my ex and we saw the JE320 sitting there for $39.00 and she said "If you don't get that you're an idiot and I don't wanna hear you bitching later cause you passed it up, so buy it, dammit!) and am very happy with sound again. Funny, until we saw the Sony in the thrift store I hadn't really thought about MD. I was thinking of getting a turntable and a nice tape deck or reel to reel. And I still may, but I'm very happy with MD at the moment. So obviously the moral is "Protect your hearing!" (And remain friends with your ex's because they know you, sometimes better than yourself)

Thanks. I noticed those numbers, especially the 132kbps, and thought that seemed a little low. And that's really it. I just needed to know the facts and I'll add my ears to the picture as well. As far as I can tell using SS and listening to the end result on any of my MiniDisc players is still a much better end sound than an mp3 player. Maybe it's the amp and processors Sony uses. Maybe it's simply a built in 'effect' of the players. Definitely more separation of instruments, more depth.

Ya I'm already thinking about some tests to do after I get out of my sick bed. (I'm a big baby when it comes to being sick).

Watched it a couple of days ago. Ya it's a little difficult to say for sure, but here's a pic of a gold je630. http://audio-heritage.jp/SONY-ESPRIT/player/mds-je630.html Also, in the movie The Ghost Writer there is a n MZ-RH1 used by the main character to record interviews. There's even a reference to it where someone asks something like "You have the original tapes?" and the main character says "No, I use discs." And of course there's a scene or two of him handing a disc to someone for transcribing. If you didn't know what it was you'd miss it, but for those of us who know it's a wonder they didn't make it even more obvious, kind of a plug for Sony, but I don't think one actually gets a clear look at the thing. The discs show up in all kinds of sic-fi movies. Johnny Mnemonic and the Matrix to name, Moon and a billion others. I always like seeing them. Whenever I pull mine out in front of a twenty-something to change the disc they always look at it like it's from the future. I could really string them along. "Ya, I work for Sony. This is a new format that we're developing. It's top secret, hasn't been made commercial yet but keep a eye out because soon they'll be everywhere." :-)

Okay, you guys all talk in bits and compression and yadda yadda. I'm not that bright. So I'm asking for a very basic answer to, I hope, a simple question: Does recording directly from CD through optical to minidisc make for a better sounding end product than ripping the CD to FLAC, converting to lossless wave, and then using SonicStage/NetMD to write the minidisc? I need to mention that I have the SonicStage import numbers set as high as possible but am writing the minidisc in SP for compatibility with my deck. Thanks for any responses.

I just wanted to pop in and let everyone know how things turned out. Pulled it apart and thoroughly cleaned all the switches. As this was a relatively new problem the gears are in kay shape. That was several days ago and it's been working perfectly since. It's a little sketchy with those ribbon cables and all but being careful one can think their way through it. Thanks all for the feedback and advice. Kris

Heya Jim, thanks for jumping in on this. It's my first experience with a Net MD Minidisc Recorder so I have no idea if it was doing this with the previous owner. (Although he was a very honest fellow and told me the read & write lenses were replaced under warranty) All this comes after just 2 days experimenting. I've had about 5 to 1 successful recordings with SS. It certainly does seem to crash during the TOC Write phase after a song has been transferred. Of the successful recordings they all sound great, whether through optical cable, RCA, or SS. All I can say is it only happened once today out of 5 disc creations and that initializing the disc first with SS, regardless if it's a blank disc or not, seems to help. Actually, thanks to you I was able to fix my gear grinding MDS JE-320 as well. (Cleaned the crap out of all the switches. Been perfect since!) Cheers to you, Jim.

Hm... time consuming. Do you notice a difference in sound quality? This is my first 'Net MD' MiniDisc, hence the SS interest/experimentation. I have 3 non-NetMD machines. (OMG! I have 4 player/recorders now!)

Hey man, thanks for the feedback. No virus. It seems to be related to the usb transfer, at least the system only crashes while a transfer is happening. I cleaned all the usb contacts in the cradle and am trying a different cable. So for two good transfers with no problem... lets hope that's all it needed. The frustrating part about the crash's is that the computer actually reboots. Grr... can't even see what the error message was. Thanks again for the feedback.

I'm in Sonic Stage hell. I'm new to MD and have become a fan. I'm using the latest Sonic Stage which is great, I really love it. I made a few very nice discs. Sound awesome. But now it's crashing almost every time I try to export to the MD player. I reinstalled the software and it didn't help. I can't even tell you why it's crashing because XP Pro isn't giving me any info, just a flash of the blue screen of death then it completely reboots. As a Mac user who is just using XP for the use of Sonic Stage I can tell you this is frustrating. MacBook, 4 gb ram, 720gb hard drive, Running on its own partition, not emulated, Win XP PRO SP3, Latest Sonic Stage MD = Sony MZ-N1 Any insight at all would be great, even if all you can say is that you have the same problem, just so I know it's not just me. Thank you

Hey, thanks for the tip, I'll search for his info. I'm in Victoria BC CANADA I'm probably going to find a couple more for parts. As you say there are some good deals out there. I think we may be on the cusp of a new interest in the medium. I know people love to hear about my portable when I'm out and about. :-)

Sony MDS-JE320 Discs go in fine and load and play normally, but upon ejection the disc comes out and the display flashes "WELCOME" and "EJECT" and I can hear the ejection system grinding. (Ew! Makes me sick) Even when I remove the disc this keeps happening until I power the unit off or load another disc. If I have no disc in the system and it's not freaking out, inserting a disc, even just an inch or so into the system starts this behaviour but again once the disc is loaded all is fine. I'm assuming there is some sort of sensor that needs cleaning. Maybe optical or contact sensor. Anyone fix this before? Have any tips? I'm pretty comfortable opening it but the load/play mechanism looks pretty complicated. Thanks guys for any feedback. :-)